Society of All Artists - It's All About Art

It's all about Art opens at the Business Design Centre in Islington today and is open tomorrow and Saturday. It's organised by the Society of All Artists.

It's all about Art

This is a three day event between 23rd - 25th July at the Business Design Centre in Islington (download a PDF location map ) inbetween Liverpool Road and Upper Street and a couple of minutes walk from the Underground station at Angel, Islington.

Hours are 9.15am ot 5.00pm each day and he price of a ticket for non members is £9.00 on the day. (They had discounts for members and tickets bought in advance).

This is where the Artists and Illustrators Magazine used to hold their art events and many is the time I've departed from those clutching all sorts of goodies bought for discounted prices!

The old Artists and Illustrators event used to be HUGE I'm assuming that the SAA event is going to be similar - but possibly lower key? I'm going to go and find out tomorrow when I'll be visiting in the afternoon to see what it has to offer.

It comprises:

• FREE painting demonstrations, FREE workshops and other activities relating to a variety of media and by professional artists from the Painting & Drawing Channel on Sky Digital
  
• an area devoted to products from the SAA Home Shop catalogue - you can see the sort of brands involved in the product logos displayed on the website.
  

If you're interested you can find out more on the It's all about art page on the SAA website. Personally I thought this could have been a tad more informative. I couldn't work out whether all the artists were appearing every day and, if they were, what times they were on.

There's also the SAA Artist of the Year 2009 Exhibition and a display if the artwork which made the final. The presentations for the winners of the 2009 competition will be held on Saturday 25th at 1.00pm.

Society of All Artists

The Society of All Artists has been around for quite a long while. They've developed a range of activities and offers for the hobby artist over time.

One of the things which is worth knowing about is that they offer insurance for exhibitions. This is the website page which provides more information about insurance. The level of insurance offered depends on the level of membership and at gold membership they also offer third party liability insurance which is very useful for solo exhibitions in spaces you have hired if the hire fee does not carry insurance cover for your exhibition.

They have also negotiated Membership for Art Clubs (which includes Public Liability Insurance).

The basic individual membership package offers:

• product supply: a promise to supply products at competitive prices plus up to 60% discounts on certain products plus a 100% no quibble guarantee free postage and packing (UK mainland members) plus a Freephone Orderline (for UK members)

We accept any return for any reason and will refund or replace the product. If a product is broken or damaged we pay the return postage, if you just don't like it, you pay the return postage. A full refund will be paid by the same method as we receive payment.
SAA - Product returns guarantee

• 6 issues of 'PAINT' their newsletter
• FREE or Reduced - entry to art shows
• FREE £500 Insurance - for paintings at exhibitions (UK Only)
• Access to Tuition - workshops, demos, etc
• SAA Loyalty Points
• FREE Entry to Competitions - including SAA Artist of the Year
• FREE Legal Helpline - for all legal matters

You can also find helpful details on the website of

• their art forum
• Local groups are run by volunteer Regional Society Co-ordinators (RSCs), they organise meetings, demonstrations, visits to galleries and exhibitions.
• professional tutors for various media and subject matter on the website.

Over to you:

• are you a member of the SAA? What do you think about SAA?
• have you bought products using their services?
• what do you think of their insurance deal?
  
• have you used any other services eg accessed tutors or used the helpline?
  

Review: "Desperate Romantics" is dire dramatic drivel

I don't know what it is about the BBC which makes it utterly unable to make a drama series about artists without hitting the romantic melodrama / sensational soap opera button.

Who could forget "The Impressionists" which morphed from a major three-part factual drama series unravels the intimate history of The Impressionists (press Release #1) into

Rivalries, romance, and a struggle for recognition a unique insight into the world of the Impressionist painters in a fascinating new factual drama for BBC ONE.
The Impressionists - on the BBC and at the National Gallery

with a heavy emphasis on the "dramatic" and very little about the art.

Desparate Romantics on the BBC
John Millais (Samuel Barnett), fictional character Fred Walters (Sam Crane)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (Aidan Turner) and William Holman Hunt (Rafe Spall)

The latest set of artists which have been served up for a cultural downshift - accompanied by a Britpop/rock soundtrack - by the BBC are the Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood.

This was the first description

Set in and among the alleys, galleries and flesh-houses of 19th-century industrial London, Desperate Romantics follows the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a vagabond group of English painters, poets and critics.

A relationship drama from the perspective of this iconoclastic group of dysfunctional male romantics, the series follows their lives and relationships as they shamelessly scheme and strive to find fame, fortune and success, as well as love and quite a bit of sex along the way.

This colourful and rude gang drama from BBC Drama Production....

Basically, it's Entourage with easels. Desperate Romantics paints a modern, vivid and irreverent portrait of this group of painters whose attitude to the establishment makes them comparable to the punks a hundred years later.
BBC Drama Production presents Desperate Romantics for BBC Two (my hyperlink)

I guess the BBS has cottoned on to the idea that sex sells. Which is curious because for very many years the BBC made rather a lot of money by making very high quality drama series with excellent production values. Obviously in the new era of mega salaries for the BBC bosses and champagne expense accounts the production values went out the window along with the value in terms of how they spent the licence payers money.

To be honest it is series like these which make me think that the BBC should be totally cut adrift from the income from the licence fee. Why not have a system where all the television companies can compete for funds for programmmes which genuinely educate and inform? Then we might get to see some real quality!

The BBC Press Release failed to identify the commissioning editor responsible for this cultural downshift in drama series. However the identification of the series producer as being Ben Evans (Kenneth Williams: Fantabulosa!, Curse Of Comedy) explains a lot.

I'm with the reviewer from the Independent - this is Trainspotting applied to the Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood. Plus the writing is absolutely chock-full of the most appalling tabloid straplines by way of introducing characters and context.

Apparently there is a factual book called Deserate Romantics by Franny Boyle which inspired this drama series (all six episodes). Desperate Romantics: The Private Lives of the Pre-Raphaelites by Franny Moyle is a review of it by Frances Wilson. It was interesting to learn that Moyle had had a career in arts programming at the BBC - it all seems very incestuous to me! It was very odd to read the conclusion of the review - which is a stark contrast to the way it's being played out on television - and then to find out that Franny Boyle is the Co-Executive Producer. How one has to suffer for one's art?

Despite its lush subject, Desperate Romantics is not a biography in the fleshly school. There is nothing indulgently sensuous, or melodramatic, or morally vacant in Moyle's handling of these stories. Instead she tells her tale plain and at a belting pace, pursuing events through troughs of letters and journals, peppering the commentary with the occasional Freudian reading. She writes with the bracing good humour of a head girl - friends are “chums”, people feel “chuffed”, journeys are “jollies”, arguments are “ding-dongs” - and the jauntiness of her approach is a refreshing antidote to the incestuous, dreamlike claustrophobia of these interlocking lives. Her book is powerful, absorbing and, well, rather jolly.
Desperate Romantics: The Private Lives of the Pre-Raphaelites by Franny Moyle

However all was explained when I found the Daily Telegraph article by Desperate Romantics dramatist Peter Bowker - see the Daily Telegraph - 'I always was a desperate romantic' - and the conflation of the PRB story with punk rock / prog rock / adolescent male yearnings begins to be explained.

I have a horror of dramatised art biography but Franny's book offered something different. Her book looked at the Brotherhood's art through the filter of their remarkably tangled and compromised love lives.

Do check out the narrative text descrbing this new series on the BBC iplayer site - it is OTT and then some.

Some artists want lasting fame. Some want money. Others want sex. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood want all of it. .....Unfortunately, the art world isn't much interested in a bunch of young, punk iconoclasts raging against the 'establishment' of the Royal Academy - particularly when one of that set, the shamelessly arrogant Rossetti, has yet to learn to paint

The one interesting thing the BBC has produced is a website "Explore the paintings" which allows you to zoom in on the paintings and to also see how Tate Britain digitized the paintings. It's a pity that the information here isn't also available to those watching on television.

(left to right)
Christ in the House of His Parents (1849-50) John Everett Millais.
Ecce Ancilla Domini! (1850) (The Annunciation) 1849-50 Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
The Hireling Shepherd (1851) by William Holman Hunt

The episode last night followed the genesis of some famous paintings.

• Christ in the House of His Parents (1849-50) (aka `The Carpenter's Shop') 1849-50 Oil on canvas, support: 864 x 1397 mm by John Everett Millais. According to Tate Britain, Millais was viciously attacked by the press for showing the holy family as ‘ordinary’. Charles Dickens described Christ as ‘a hideous, wry-necked, blubbering, red-haired boy in a night-gown.’ Click here to watch a video about this painting coutesy of SMArt History. This is the link to the BBC website version of this painting with an expert commentary and explains why this is a notorious image.
• Ecce Ancilla Domini! (1850) (The Annunciation) 1849-50 Oil on canvas, support: 724 x 419 mm frame: 1002 x 698 x 88 mm by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. This is its Tate Britain webpage
  
• The Hireling Shepherd (1851) by William Holman Hunt (30 1/16 in × 43 ⅛ in, oil on canvas) Manchester City Art Gallery. This is link to the painting's web page in the Gallery.
  

What really irritates me about series like these is the way they avoid any attempt at education. They virtually ignore how paintings are created, the ways of painting which were created and the sequencing of where and when they were painted. While there was some reference to drawing in the programme it's in isolation and not related at all to how the paintings are developed. Thus it perpetuates the myth that paintings spring from the easel straight out of the artist's head as opposed being the product of a series of studies and working through a process of selecting subjects to portray and how best to compose them. The symbolism and meanings portrayed for example in The Hireling Shepherd were completely ignored in favour of focusing on the brothel model hired to pose. All in all it's yet more titillation for the instant gratification generation!

I suspect the best bit about this new drama series will be reading the reviews - which I've rounded up for you. I can't wait to see what AA Gill has to say about this series having read what he had to say about the last one!

• The Guardian - Sam Wollaston on Desperate Romantics - definitely worth a read. The Guardian also published an interview with Peter Bowker last week - Sex and rebellion: Desperate Romantics writer Peter Bowker on his new BBC drama

Desperate Romantics does try hard to distance itself from other costume drama. This, it shouts, is un-costume drama: derobed drama. Look, no clothes. It's certainly more fun than, say, Larksnore to Chocolate Box. But, in spite of some good performances, it's neither as witty nor as funny as Entourage. It's nothing like it, really: more of a jolly romp – with all that nudity, the suggestive sharpening of pencils, the incessant comedy bonk-along-to-brass oompah music.

• The Independent - Tom Sutcliffe reviews Desperate Romantics, BBC2 - Painting by numbers

Ruskin, incidentally, is played by the excellent Tom Hollander, here struggling with a role that is three parts dictionary of quotations to one part tortured sexual repression.

Meanwhile I'm toying with titles for reviews of further episodes. Carry On Up the Canvas springs to mind..............

Links:

• Desperate Romatics - the website (beware plot spoiler!!!)
• BBC Press Office - Desperate Romantics
• BBC ipplayer - Desparate Romantics Episode 1
  
• Victoria and Albery Museum - Bibliography Guide to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

Making A Mark Posts about The Impressionists

• The Impressionists - on the BBC and at the National Gallery (30 April 2006)
  
• The Impressionists - a review (1st May 2006)
  
• Taking the Monet? (8 May 2006)

"Meet the kittens" on SOFA front cover

An awful lot of really excellent work is submitted to the Society of Feline Artists' (SOFA) exhibition each year. Both full and associate members are invited to submit work early for consideration for the brochure. The quality is so good that it's always regarded as a great honour to get your work selected by Jillian Llewellyn Lloyd, Director of the Llewellyn Alexander Gallery, as an image for the exhibition's colour brochure/private view invite.

Gayle Mason (Fur in the Paint) has had work in the brochure for the last two years (she's always very organised!), while I kept forgetting to get my work finished before April.

However, this year I decided to have a go and got three drawings of kittens submitted early - and in time for consideration for the brochure.

SOFA Exhibition 2009
Colour Brochure/Private View Invite

I already knew that two were definitely in the exhibition and that one of them was likely to be in the brochure but you can imagine my surprise when the catalogue arrived today to find that "Meet the Kittens" has actually made the front cover!

Gayle has also got a lovely drawing of a blue burmese "Moody Blue" on the inside of the brochure.

The other two works on the front cover are:

• Christmas Cat by Irina Garmashova (14" x 20, acrylic and coloured pencil on paper)
  
• Loved by Sarah Butt (9.5" x 10" acrylic on board)
  

I'll highlight some of the others featured in the brochure nearer the exhibition.

The exhibition

The SOFA Annual Exhibition takes place at the Llewellyn Alexander Gallery in London. The exhibition dates this year are 28th August through to 18th September, (10am - 7.30pm Monday to Saturday).

The exhibition features the work of both Full and Associate members of SOFA members. On show will be approximately 300 paintings of cats in oil, acrylic, watercolour, pastel and etchings - making it the largest exhibition of cat art in the country.

I'll post an update when the exhibition goes online - which usually happens before the exhibition opens at the gallery.

Private View

The Champagne Private View is held on Tuesday 1st September between 12pm and 3pm. The exhibition is officially opened by the Society's Patron David Grant MBE at 2.15pm. (He's that really nice vet from RSPCA Harmsworth who we all used to watch on the BBC programme Animal Hospital).

I'll be at the PV so this is a call-out to friends to let me know if you'd like an invite to see the work.

A different business model for an art society exhibition

The SOFA exhibition is somewhat unusual compared to many art society exhibitions and I thought it worthwhile highlighting the differences between the SOFA exhibition and most other art exhibitions.

Most art societies rent space/weeks in a commercial gallery. They then need to organise the selection, receipt of works, cataloguing and hanging - which depending on the arrangements with the gallery, very often falls to Executive members and helpers

SOFA has an agreement with Llewellyn Alexander that it will hold its exhibition in the gallery each year and it is a regular fixture in the gallery's schedule of exhibitions. It always has 'regular' exhibition status and thus has to 'pay its way' as it were. Hence the selection of works to be exhibited is done entirely by the Gallery.

The Executive have no involvement in selection, do not have to receive works or store works, do not organise the catalogue and do not need to hang works. There's also no submission fee for the artists because this is a strictly commercial exhibition albeit one held on behalf of an art society. The commission deducted from sales is payable to the gallery who also look after the previous buyers' mailing list.

I would add that it is also one of the most successful art society exhibitions I know. This is due in no small part to the expertise and efforts of the gallery's directors and staff.

I'm always pleased to get work into this exhibition - and this year I'm ecstatic that my work has made the front cover of a brochure which I've been getting and keeping for many years now!

Llewellyn Alexander Gallery: 124 - 126 The Cut, Waterloo, London SE1 8LN. Telephone: 020 7620 1322/4

Imagekind - why I'm looking for an alternative print on demand service

An image from my Imagekind gallery - "clipped and shared" with Blogger
...but I could have done this with anybody's Imagekind images!

I've stopped paying a subscription fee for Imagekind and have downgraded to a free site. I'm also looking around for an alternative service.

I know a lot of my readers took out membership of Imagekind when I did so I'd like to take time out to explain to you the reasons behind my decision. This will also be of interest to anybody who has been considering using Imagekind for a print on demand service.

I used to be a Pro Platinum member of Imagekind with an Annual membership which basically means that I paid £94.99 per annum so that I could have unlimited galleries and unlimited images and a slightly better framing commission and a little bit of an edge in terms of how images are found (categories, keywords etc)

To be worth it I basically need to come out ahead and/or feel that I've had a very good service to make it worthwhile paying for it.

• Question: Is Imagekind membership worth the money?
• Answer: No - on both counts
  

First - the good news

The free membership option now offers 3 galleries and unlimited images and unlimited storage and traffic. The latter aspects are frankly what I would expect at the present time given the price of storage. What it means for for me is that I can keep a goodly number on images on Imagekind (for the time being), categorised as to type, and not worry about charges.

Dan at Empty Easel wrote last week about - Imagekind. Here's his post Imagekind Update: Lots of New Features Now Available for Imagekind Artists. He's identified some positives. While I agree some aspects are an improvement, to my mind they aren't enough to keep me paying a subscription and they don't address at all the aspects which give me cause for concern.

I suggest you read both posts and make your own minds up relative to your own circumstances.

WHY I've downgraded to a free membership of Imagekind

Now for the not so good news. Before you start reading, do please note that all my statements below are based on my actual experience or tests I've made using the site and comparison sites.

• Last year, my account was automatically debited with my annual subscription without prior notice. I had no chance to review whether or not I wanted to continue and no prior notice of when the money was going to be debited. I find that completely unethical - particularly in a recession. That action alone meant that I was always going to fail to renew my subscription this year.
  
• I've since been told by Imagekind that I had agreed that they could automatically renew my subscription. I think what they have failed to understand is that in the UK I have all sorts of items set up for automatic renewal each year - and for each and every one of them I get a prior notice reminding me of what is going to happen. I imagine that those companies emplying good business practice in the USA would do the same thing.
  
• It's interesting that this year I did get an email warning me that my subscription was about to expire - and I took immediate action to remove my payment details and switch my account to free membership.
  
• Imagekind moved the goalposts after I joined - and created an Associates programme which meant anybody can now take an image of my work and place it on any site they like but without any information which identifies it as being mine or that I am the artist or that the image is copyright protected.
  
• In other words they started to behave like Amazon forgetting that images can be reproduced whereas items sold on Amazon can't! I wrote about this at length in this post A cautionary note about Imagekind last November.
  
• The issue for me is that images should only be capable of being used by Associates if I agree. I've banged on about this ad nauseam in the forum to no effect.
  

Do I lose ownership of my images when I upload them to Imagekind?

No. You are not transferring ownership of your artwork to Imagekind and retain any and all rights in and to the content that you upload to Imagekind. By submitting content to Imagekind, you are granting us a nonexclusive license to produce your image for an Imagekind product. Please read our Terms of Use for more detailed information.

• Imagekind makes it easy for anybody to share an image anywhere - while removing it from all detail relating to ownership. I also have grave reservations about the way Imagekind describes their service. For example you can find above what they say about ownership in the FAQs section. It says I retain and any all rights. Complete utter baloney and misleading in the extreme! Each and every image permits ANY Imagekind member to share the image elsewhere. They even provide for the code to enable it to be lifted and placed elsewhere.
  
• What that does is remove the picture from all details about copyright and who created the picture
• If you right click the image you can copy it BUT you can't discover where it came from UNLESS YOU CLICK THE IMAGE. In other words it creates an orphan artwork.
  
• If you are doubt about this take a look at the picture in this blog post today. That was inserted into this post with no other text as a result of lifting code from the Imagekind site.
• The significance of this is that while I post a lot of images on the Internet, I always post images @72 dpi and no larger than 500 pixels - and always on a site which identifies it as mine and has a copyright notice. That's not what's happening with the images being shared by Imagekind.
  
• The image they post as a 'large image' is larger than I usually choose to share. More importantly while it can display an Imagekind watermark on the site this disappears when it is removed from the site - a fact that I should think most Imagekind members are not aware of. I tested this using an image produced by somebody I know - Cindy Haase (hi Cindy!) - and got exactly the same result. The code clipped the image, which appeared in the draft preview of this post - and that image had no visible watermark (or information about where I had got it from!). Now it's not displaying the 300dpi image which can only be accessed by Imagekind staff. However it's not at all helpful when trying to assert copyright over ones images found on other sites - and potentially being claimed as "all their own work" by other people.
  
• Imagekind charges very significant shipping costs for anybody based in the UK or Europe. While it frequently offers free shipping to its American customers (and NEVER to international customers) I was recently faced with paying $47.99 shipping standard delivery via Fed Ex in 12 business days for a print worth $14.99 which I was sending to my mother. Guess what - I didn't place the order!
  

• Customers in the USA would be able to get that for free when free shipping is offered - as it regularly is. I get to pay a charge which is 320% the value of the print. Frankly it's going to be cheaper to send it to a friend in the USA and then get them to send it on to my mother!
  
• Let's compare this to buying a similar sized and priced art print from Art.com from Amazon.com in the USA and then shipping that to the UK. I've just checked and a slightly larger fine art botanical print priced at $16.99 ships standard delivery to my mother for $14.99and arrives within 10-20 business days which is perfectly acceptable
  
• In other words it costs $33 more (ie 200+% MORE to use Imagekind rather than Art.Com) and the delivery time to all intents and purposes was no different
  
• I don't ever recall seeing shipping charges like this in the past. According to Imagekind it's because FedEx have raised their prices by a huge amount. However three months ago they said they were looking at other options - and three months later nothing has changed. According to Fed Ex rates increased by c.7% in january 2009 - which is a whole lot less than the Imagekind percentage rate increase for shipping internationally. One could be forgiven for thinking that Imagekind is resorting to recovering its costs via a shipping charge rather than the cost of the product - and we all know what we think about retailers who do that!
  
• Discounted offers only available to customers in continental USA. Despite the fact that international customers pay identical subscription charges and much higher deliver charges, offers relating to the cost of shipping or framing are only offered to customers in continental USA. That's fine for my customers in the USA - and is completely irrelevant to anybody living in anywhere else. My bottom line - I'm not paying a subscription fee to subsidise a service to other artists.
  
• Minimal sales - I freely admit I've not done as much as I could to punt my fine art prints in people's faces. That's because I'm not in to heavy duty merchandising. However they do have a complete page on my website, do get promoted on my blog and in various other places. So it's not like I haven't done anything. However sales have been absolutely minimal. To generate commission from framing one first has to sell pictures in frames and to be honest I think most people have thought that costs are a little too high. Also even when you do sell, you're tied to them for quite a time until you reach the minimum level which generates a payment. In terms of what I've paid out to Imagekind over the last two years I'm certainly down on the equation. Which is another jolly good reason to not pay for a subscription.
• No statistics - improvements to the site do mean that certain categories of membership will now start to get limited statistics. However if you are using Imagekind to raise awareness of your art do bear in mind that advertising companies usually have to produce validated statistics about the number of visits and visitors they get and how long they stay. Imagekind does not provide any statistics. However that's not to say we can't take a look at what compete.com has to say - which is rather revealing as to the relative success of different print on demand services.
  

A review of the relative traffic for three print on demand sites
Imagekind (blue) Red Bubble (green) and Fine Art America (orange)
Traffic increases in the last year are 36%, 156% and 404%

data from Compete.com

To be honest, right now I'm on the point of deserting Imagekind completely.

It's the "share" option which is driving me in that direction - it shares my images while removing them from all obvious data about the image and my copyright - which will dictate that decision.

Recommendations

1. If you've got a free Imagekind account review whether you want to:

• add in more images
• create more than one gallery

2. If you are paying for an Imagekind account, check out the costs and benefits to you. This is going to vary depending on where you live and how you promote your work.
3. Given any Imagekind member can now place an image of yours anywhere they choose, consider including the imagekind watermark on your large image.
4. Given any imagekind member can place your image anywhere they like and it doesn't identify it as yours or generate any income for you (the print sales or a licence fee) - consider whether the benefits outweight the risks
   

Print on Demand - what are the alternatives?

I've found another very successful photographer who has been very concerned about the same things as me. He's already left Imagekind and has now signed up for a new service - which I'm now off to investigate........

Watch this space! I'll be updating Print Art on Demand - Resources for Artists with my findings and reporting back here in due course

Previous posts on Making A Mark

• A cautionary note about Imagekind (November 2008)
• CafePress acquires Imagekind - what next? ( 9th July 2008)
• Changes at Imagekind: the pros and the cons (14th February 2008)
  
• Imagekind: an update and a new Catnapping gallery (20th July 2007)
  
• "Making A Mark" sets up a gallery at Imagekind! (19th July 2007)

Link: Print Art on Demand - Resources for Artists

19th July 2009 - Who's made a mark this week? #105

Hidden
16 x 12 on Arches
copyright Gayle Mason

I'm topping and tailing this blog post this week with two aspects of technology which help to market art to online viewers.

First, the Annual National Exhibition of Wildlife Art opened on Friday. Its excellent online gallery opened at the same time and is permits buyers to reserve works for purchase online. So sensible!

Intensity
16" x 12" on colourfix
copyright Gayle Mason

My good friend Gayle Mason has had two works accepted this year - which you can see above and on the right. You can follow how Intensity was developed on Gayle's blog Fur in the Paint

• Wolf in acrylic and coloured pencil
• Wolf - continued
• Mixed Media Wolf- part 3
• Wolf Continued
• Wolf Finished, Snow Leopard Started
• finishing with what it feels like to get that letter of selection... National Exhibition of Wildlife Art - NEWA

For anybody who's ever wanted to take a good close look at wildlife art this is your chance.

Art Blogs

Drawing and sketching

• Trees Challenge: Vivien (Painting Prints and Stuff) has a paint or sketch trees challenge.

The challenge is to produce sketches of trees done from life.

• Vivien will be producing a thread with links to responses at the end of the challenge - in the meantime here are a few of them:
• Jeanette (Illustrated Life) has Trees and sketching, Old Larch, Pond and Trees in Bulk
• Robyn has produced Early Tree Sketches and Tree No3
  
• Ronell has been drawing trees in ink
• Rocks Challenge: while Jeanette (Illustrated Life) has a draw/paint rocks challenge!
• Drawing on My Notes presents a wonderful word picture about drawing in the Amazon on Drawing the Motmot - as well as the great drawings in this post.
• I went to Highgrove - the home of Prince of Wales and his family - for a tour of what is a very impressive garden - all created in the last 30 years. My challenge was to try and sketch while on a garden tour. Absolutely no cameras or photographs are allowed - and I got very good at 2 minute sketches while on the tour!
  
• Downloading my colour memory is about one of the issues associated with sketches which only take 2 minutes while following a garden tour
• A visit to Highgrove - Thyme Walk and Lime Avenue views of and from the rear of the house
  
• A view of Tetbury - is what you can see front the front door of Highgrove
  

Drawing people, portraiture & Figurative

• I like Karin Jurick's latest challenge - Week 41 - 43 Challenge - Man Resting on Metal Chair - on Different Strokes from Different Folks. It focuses on getting the figure right. I absolutely agree with Karin's point about people avoiding including figures because they don't feel confident drawing them. Practice is to my mind the only way forward on this one.

Images of sketching people in interiors in London
- see Interior Landscapes - Drawings by Katherine Tyrrell
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

• Last week I posted 10 "Dos and Don'ts" for how to draw people while eating based on just a little experince. It focuses on the practical issues relating to keep your host happy.
  

I frequently draw people in public places while eating in public places as restaurants, cafes and gallery tea rooms. In fact I've drawn in cafes and restaurants all over the world - in the UK, Europe, North America, Asia and Australia.

• while Roz Stendhal (Roz Wound Up) wrote back in June about Being Happy with the Little Bits—or Keep on Pushing to See Where It Goes: Part One

Painters

• Watch a video of Tracy Hall painting a miniature work of art in watercolour - and just keep reminding yourself of the size of the work while you're watching - it's 2.25" x 1.75" watercolour on board. You can see the finished work in Rose painting in miniature on her blog Watercolour Artist Diary
• There's an interview with painter Joanne Mattera (who writes Art Marketing Mondays) on Making the Art Seen. This is a blog which is a non-commercial virtual gallery featuring art interviews. It's a fascinating account of the experiences of creativity in her life, her painting and blogging about art. She also has soem great advice for artists starting out. There are two posts:
• Featured Painter: Joanne Mattera - Part I
• Featured Painter: Joanne Mattera - Part II

Photography

• Take a look at the work of Erik Johansson who is the most highly rated artist on Artist a Day. Absolutely stunning work in terms of both concept and execution. This is an interview with an artist who is operating at the edge of reality.
• This is the the Prix Pictet - the world’s first prize dedicated to photography and sustainability - and the 2009 shortlist. It's sponsored by the Financial times and this is the FT article commenting on The 2009 Prix Pictet shortlisted photographs

Printmakers

• Annie Bisset (Woodcut Dream) shared a Woodcut Instructional Film (1968)
• I came across Matt Brown's work - traditional Japanese woodcuts of the New England countryside and coastline. He produces hand-rubbed color woodblock prints made using the Japanese hanga method. I then found his website Matt Brown Woodblock Prints - and his gallery of work. I particularly like his prints from the moutains and am very taken with Pemaquid from Little Thrumcap (as in finger hovering over the order button!) I then saw Annie had written about him in Workshop With Matt Brown. I also found another website about his moka-hanga work.
• Belinda Del Pesco has been showing us how to do monoprints and collographs
• Monotype: Early Retirement
• Collograph: The Written Word

Art Group Blogs

On Sketchercise most of us are losing weight and some of us are even getting into trousers a size smaller! (Preen!) :)

• Jana Bouc did us proud this week with her first bike ride in two years - read Amazing Grace: “Sketchercizing” on the S.F. Bay Trail on Jana's Journal. Just a quick note to those inclined to apply to join us. If you've not been sketchercising already then you'll be asked to join Sketchercise on Flickr first and show us your results. Experience to date is that people ask to join a group because it exists and not because they want to participate in the activity of a group.

Art Business and Marketing

I'm starting with two books which are getting good reviews. the first is aimed more at artists and the second more at galleries but also of interest to artists.

• First The Artist's Guide: How to Make a Living Doing What You Love by Jackie Battenfield (The Artist's Guide). This book is getting some absolutely fantastic reviews. Read Making a Living As an Artist by Annie Bisset - Woodblock Dreams and Joanne Mattera's - Joanne Mattera Art Blog review in this "Marketing Mondays" post.
• Next Ed Winkelman's (edward_winkelman) new book How to Start and Run a Commercial Art Gallery which was published this week. Read Marketing Mondays: What Artists Should Know About Running a Gallery for why artists should read it too.
  
• Ed also highlights an article in The Art Newspaper (How to beat the recession: cut costs, slash prices, don’t lie and be creative (Archive) - which is only accessible to those who subscribe - however he provides some highlights in his blog in Your First Recession as a Dealer? Must-Read Advice in The Art Newspaper. It should give food for thought to artists who have not adjusted their own prices during the recession. he also references his earlier post about Starting a Commercial Art Gallery in This Economy
• Yey! Joanne Mattera (Joanne Mattera Art Blog) has also written about the other side of the gallery equation - Marketing Mondays: How to Reject a Gallery. Lots of great responses to turning down a gallery who might be interested. It's also a great potted education in the way some galleries can behave and why you need to do your research!
  
• Lisa Call has a new art business blog called MakeBigArt. It's about empowering artists and her early posts are chock full of helpful tips. Here's some examples:
  • Do I need a Facebook Fan Page?
• Facebook Fan Page – Practical Tips - masses of illustrated 'how to's
• The Power of Responsibility
• Motivation by Accountability

• She's also been writing about Following My Path on her main blog Contempoarry Textile Art. An interesting reflection on what happens when you don't get a good fit between coach and student. I have to confess I lean towards the transparenty ethos.
  
• Luann Udell (Luann Udell) has written about CUSTOMER CARE: Repair the Goods, Repair the Relationship
• for those interested in showing at the Ann Arbor Art Fairs, Anna (See. Be. Draw. ) has done a very interesting analysis of activity at these fairs in Art fair statistics 2009

With over 1,000 participating artists and over 500,000 visitors, the art fairs are together one of the largest art fairs in the United States.

Art Exhibitions

• The British Museum has announced a once in a lifetime show of Italian renassance drawings - you can see a slideshow in Italian Renaissance drawings at the British Museum: from Leonardo to Lorenzo di Credi

The 100 or so works will span the period 1400-1510 and artists including Jacopo and Gentile Bellini, Botticelli, Filippo Lippi, Mantegna, Michelangelo and Raphae

• Radical Nature Art and Architecture for a Changing Planet 1969–2009 is on at the Barbican until October. It includes an installation in Dalston which seeks to replicate the wheat fields planted in Battery park by Agnes Denes. You can see photos - but nowhere does it say where that wheat field is!
  
• On Tuesday I published my Exhibition Review of The Highgrove Florilegium at the Garden Museum. This is a 'must see' for all botanical art fans. This is a video report from report from BBC news about the 2nd edition of the Highgrove Florilegium - Expensive royal book on display published to coincide with the opening. Both volumes I and II form part of this historic exhibition. This is the Garden Museum's website.
• Holly Bedrosian (Holly Bedrosian Fine Art) has a post about the Salmagundi Club Non-Member Show Reception
• Tony Moffitt (Tony Moffitt's Art Blog) reminds us of the importance of recognising our exhibitions aren't the only thing which is happening and of Finding The Right Date

Artists Communities and Art Forums

• Wet Canvas has a new logo. The globe and the coloured paint splashes have gone and, if I'm honest, what's left is an extremely boring logo!

Art History

• After reading the prologue to Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art by Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo on the Wall Street Journal, I've decided to introduce a new section about Provenance to Art History & the History of Art - Resources for Art Lovers
• The Art Newspaper reports Royal Collection opts out of oil painting survey which based on the article seems like a very odd decision. See
  Art of the state - and the state of the art for more about the exercise to catalogue all oil paintings in public ownership.
  
• James Gurney (Gurney Journey) had a nice post Midday Near Moscow with great links about the Russian landscape painter Ivan Shishkin (1832-1898). I keep thinking I need to learn more about Russian artists!

Colour

• What Color Could You Use More Of? in Psychology Today by Karen Leland in The Perfect Blend

Copyright

On Friday my post about the National Portrait Gallery versus Wikipedia - Round Two! summarised a number of links in this fracas. I hope everybody works towards a constructive solution of this one.

Tips and techniques

• Kelli Money Huff has written a really great post about Photo phobia on Hershberger & Huff Studios. This will give you a sense of the post.

My creative partner (in books, teaching, blog, Etsy, blah, blah, blah) Carlynne Hershberger had to learn to photograph our artwork for our first book(Creative Colored Pencil Workshop). I say "she had to" because if we had depended on me to do it, our publisher would still be waiting and I would be under my bed in the fetal position sobbing and mumbling to myself.

• Continuing the photography theme, a nice post by Jeanette showing how she is Making decisions with technology to review her photographs prior to creating her art
  
• Yesterday - I posted about another way of Correcting colour: another way to stop your white paper looking grey

Websites, webware and blogging

• Alyson B Stanfield (Art Biz Blog) has wrritten about What to tweet and How to reply to tweets on Twitter. For what it's worth, I'm no longer following people for one of two reasons - low content quality (ie what I'm interested in) to frequency of tweet ratio and staccato tweeting (you know the one - 6-8 tweets in quick succession).
  

and finally........

The very frequent mantra for artists when a recession bites is to focus on how you're marketing your art. The same holds true for the larger art organisations.

Sales at the auction houses are some 70% down on last summer. However, following the success of bidding via its live website, Christies (the Auction House founded 1766) has come up with a new wheeze. It's created an iPhones app for its auctions. You can browse sales and catalogues and check auction results. A couple of articles about it follow:

• Christie's turns iPhone into work of art
• Art Auction Advances With Christie's iPhone Bidding App